Archives for October 2017

I lived through these times and like most people I had my own opinions. After watching this, I see every opinion I had was biased or wrong.

The documentary points out how our veterans were brave, and even the ant-war protestors and those who fled to Canada were brave by doing what they believed in, right or wrong.

It shows the North and South Vietnamese fought bravely as did the Viet Cong. I may be confused because my belief system has been rattled, but it seems the only ones who weren’t brave were many American politicians. Not many stood up for their beliefs. To see how they treated us Americans, and their supposed allies is goddamn sickening.

I believe every American should watch this to see how so few can fuck up the world. Democrat or Republican, it doesn’t seem to make a difference.

Today is the birthday of British novelist and feminist icon Doris Lessing (books by this author), born Doris May Tayler in Kermanshah (now Persia), Iran (1919). Lessing is best known for her novel The Golden Notebook (1962), which became a kind of handbook for the feminist movement of the 1960s and ’70s.

Lessing wrote most often about women’s struggles with motherhood, sex and sexuality, depression, and conflict. She published The Golden Notebook in 1962. The story of a would-be writer named Anna Wulf who tries to live as freely as a man, the book became an international best-seller. Vogue called it “dismal, drab, embarrassing, sodden with a particularly useless form of self-pity …” but it caught on and became a bible for the feminist movement, which frustrated Lessing, who thought the book was more about mental disintegration. She said: “It’s stupid. I mean, there’s nothing feminist about The Golden Notebook. The second line is ‘As far as I can see, everything is cracking up.’ That is what The Golden Notebook is about!”

, born Ferdinand Joseph La Menthe in New Orleans (1890). He grew up listening to French and Italian opera, hymns, ragtime, and minstrel songs. He was a great piano player, and he apprenticed in the seedy bars and brothels of New Orleans. In addition to being a talented performer, he was a pool shark, a gambler, and a pimp. He wore a turquoise coat, a Stetson hat, and tight striped pants. He said: “I was Sweet Papa Jelly Roll with the stovepipes in my hips, and all the women in town was dying to turn my damper down.”

At the age of fourteen, he began working as a piano player in a brothel (or as it was referred to then, a sporting house.) While working there, he was living with his religious church-going great-grandmother and had her convinced that he worked as a night watchman in a barrel factory.

In that atmosphere, he often sang smutty lyrics and it was at this time that he took the nickname “Jelly Roll” which at the time was black slang for the female genitalia

He traveled around the Gulf Coast, and from there moved on to the West Coast and Chicago. In the 1920s, he was one of the biggest names in jazz. He recorded major hits like “King Porter Stomp,” “Black Bottom Stomp,” “New Orleans Blues,” and the “Original Jelly Roll Blues.” He was fierce in his claim that he was the founder of jazz, and he is considered the first true jazz composer because he was the first to go beyond improvisation to write down jazz tunes. He engaged in highly publicized feuds with other musicians who claimed to be the King of Jazz, the founder of jazz or the blues, or any other title he wanted for himself. When the great jazz trumpeter Lee Collins went to record with Jelly Roll, Morton informed him: “You know you will be working for the world’s best jazz piano player … not one of the greatest — I am the Greatest.”

It was reported that scientists from Germany have discovered that a molecule in beer called hordenine activates dopamine receptors in the brain, and thus produces a positive mood.

The research in question was published back in March of this year, so I’m not sure why it only made the headlines this week – maybe Oktoberfest had something to do with it. Either way, the study did indeed find that hordenine is a dopamine D2 receptor agonist, but it’s not clear this has any relevance to beer drinkers.

The German researchers, Sommer et al., are chemists, not neuroscientists. They used computational simulations to model whether 13,000 known ‘food-derived’ molecules would bind to the D2 receptor. The hordenine molecule was predicted to fit the receptor, and follow-up experiments showed that it does indeed bind to it, suggesting possible psychoactive properties.

But Sommer et al. didn’t study whether hordenine actually exists in beer in sufficient amounts to have any effect. They didn’t consider whether it can even reach the brain after oral consumption. According to Wikipedia, some animal studies have shown that hordenine is “not orally active”, although it does have effects when injected.

Overall, Sommer et al. were engaging in pure speculation when they wrote that

Based on its presence in beer, we suggest that hordenine significantly contributes to mood-elevating effects of beer.

So I’m pretty sure that there is only one molecule in beer that makes you happy. This is the same molecule that can make you unhappy. So let’s raise a glass to ethanol, the real star of beer.

Individuals using the names of editors and senior management for The Atlantic magazine have sent out numerous fake job and interview offers, using multiple email addresses and made-up domain names. The goal is to obtain personal information, including Social Security numbers, addresses, and other sensitive data. More than 50 writers have reported being targeted by the scheme.

From a memo sent to The Atlantic staff by General Counsel for Atlantic Media:

The perpetrators have gone so far as to conduct job interviews by phone and gchat; to require signature on employment agreements, direct deposit, and tax forms; and to mail fake checks to individuals (in the hope that these “advances” would be cashed, thereby providing the perpetrators with bank account information and/or credit card information). To date, we’ve been contacted by more than 50 would-be victims, and the names of at least six of our top editorial leaders have been used.

Unfortunately, scams like this one are very common in today’s landscape. We are actively working with law enforcement and are directing any intended victims to do the same. We are also making information available about the scam on our websites and in the magazine.

If you discover that you or any of our colleagues are being impersonated, please provide details to FraudAlert@AtlanticMedia.com, which will route the information to the IT department. Likewise, if you receive any inquiries from potential victims asking you to confirm the veracity of an email purporting to have come from The Atlantic, forward those inquiries to FraudAlert@AtlanticMedia.com. IT will connect with any would-be victims to advise them of the scam and to refer them to law enforcement.

It’s the birthday of Giuseppe Verdi, born in a village in Parma, Italy (1813). His parents owned a tavern and were not very well off. But his father recognized musical talent in Giuseppe and bought him a spinet (an upright harpsichord), which he kept for the rest of his life. By the age of 12, Verdi was the organist for his church. He started playing for other churches farther away from home, and then he went off to music school. He lived in the town of Busseto and boarded with a wealthy grocer who liked Verdi and wanted to support him, and whose daughter Verdi ended up marrying.

Verdi wrote marches, overtures and other pieces for the Busseto Philharmonic Society and the town marching band. But then he set his sights elsewhere and got an opera, Oberto, performed at La Scala, the most important theater in Italy, in 1839. It was a modest success. Then tragedy struck: his wife died of encephalitis. Verdi had already lost their two children in infancy. He vowed he would never write music again. But he couldn’t resist when he read the powerful libretto for Nabucco . He turned it into a stunning opera, premiering on March 9, 1842. The audience applauded for 10 minutes after the first scene, and after the chorus, the audience demanded an encore, even though they were prohibited by the Austrian government at the time. Even the stagehands, who rarely paid attention to the performance, would stop what they were doing to watch and applaud the show. Verdi used the same librettist for his next opera, Lombardi. The librettist had a procrastination problem, and Verdi had to lock him in a room in order to get him to write enough on time. Once Verdi made the mistake of sticking him in the room with his wine collection. Hours later, the librettist emerged drunk. Verdi wrote a total of 26 operas, most notably Rigoletto (1851), La Traviata(1853), Aida (1871), and Falstaff (1893).

Good morning! Here are today’s most important stories in emerging technology.

We can print untraceable guns. Should we?

Overnight, a Las Vegas shooting killed 50 people and wounded 200, making it the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history, according to Bloomberg. In poor timing, a firm called Defense Distributed simultaneously launched software that allows people to mill metal handgun bodies at home. Wired calls the result a “concealable, untraceable … unregulated metal handgun.” In the wake of the Las Vegas tragedy, expect strong debate over whether technologists should provide such opportunities.